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Thrall   Listen
verb
Thrall  v. t.  To enslave. (Obs. or Poetic)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thrall" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Deservedly thou griev'st, composed of lies From the beginning, and in lies wilt end, Who boast'st release from Hell, and leave to come Into the Heaven of Heavens. Thou com'st, indeed, 410 As a poor miserable captive thrall Comes to the place where he before had sat Among the prime in splendour, now deposed, Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, A spectacle of ruin, or of scorn, To all the host of Heaven. The happy place Imparts to thee no happiness, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... dream. For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... woodlands round Wherethrough the knight forth faring found A knight that on the greenwood ground Sat mourning: fair he was to see, And moulded as for love or fight A maiden's dreams might frame her knight; But sad in joy's far-flowering sight As grief's blind thrall might be. ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... old one held firm; but, in that breathless fortnight, she found that the charm, persistently, would not be to her what she had hoped it might be. It did not revive her; it did not lift and glorify her; rather it subjugated her and held her helpless and in thrall. She was not crowned with beams; rather, it seemed to her in moments of dizzy insight, dragged at chariot wheels. And more than once her pride revolted as she ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... sting? And say! ye tyrants in your boasted halls, Read ye no warnings on your darkened walls? Hear ye no seeming mutterings of the cloud Break from the millions which your steps have bowed? Think ye, ye hold in your ignoble thrall, Mind, soul, thought, taste, hope, feeling, valor, all? No; these unfettered scorn your nerveless hand, Sport at their will, and scoff at your command, Range through arcades of shadow-brooding palms, Snuff their free airs and ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... was come the day when on a pyre Men laid fair Paris, in a broider'd pall, And fragrant spices cast into the fire, And round the flame slew many an Argive thrall. When, like a ghost, there came among them all, A woman, once beheld by them of yore, When first through storm and driving rain the tall Black ships of Argos dash'd ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth, For justice thunders condemnation, A better world's in birth. No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations, We have been ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... his land, once more; In Aix, upon his palace stair, And held in double chain a bear. When thirty more from Arden ran, Each spake with voice of living man: "Release him, sire!" aloud they call; "Our kinsman shall not rest in thrall. To succor him our arms are bound." Then from the palace leaped a hound, On the mightiest of the bears he pressed, Upon the sward, before the rest. The wondrous fight King Karl may see, But knows not who shall victor be. These did the angel ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... forebodings which had shown her that she had no call to love and honour her mistress took clearer shape, and became a burden on her, which she might never wholly shake off. For this she saw, that she was not her own, but a chattel and a tool of one who not only used her as a thrall in the passing day, but had it in her mind to make of her a thing accursed like to herself, and to bait the trap with her for the taking of the sons of Adam. Forsooth she saw, though dimly, that her mistress was indeed wicked, and that in the bonds of that wickedness ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... industry many a week Of arduous labor of eye, and heartache, Its starving inadequate pittance to make; There were mischievous maidens and cavaliers bold, Whose blushes and glances and coquetry told A tale of the monarch who held them in thrall— Who met, as by chance, at ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... you wish that he had stayed, When all the rest The Call obeyed? —That thought of self had held in thrall His soul, and shrunk ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... I cannot break. If the negro is the thrall of his master, we are just as much the thralls of ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... history of the Orient, I find no tendency to discover the inherent worth of man or to introduce the principle of government by discussion. Left to themselves, I see no probability that any of these nations would ever have been able to break the thrall of their customs, and to reach that stage of development in which common individuals could be trusted with a large measure of individual liberty. Though I can conceive that Japan might have secured a thorough-going political centralization under the old regime, I cannot see that that centralization ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... presently took his leave, and went his way. The rest of the company speedily followed, my Lord Ashburnham the last, throwing fiery glances at the smiling young temptress, who had bewitched more hearts than his in her thrall. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... air, a cloud of heavy gray vapor. The cold felt even more intense than earlier in the day. It impressed the girl as if some tremendous force were bearing down mightily upon the world and holding it in thrall. With the lowering of the sun the shadows had grown longer. After a time the slight sound of the man's snowshoes over the crackling snow, of the scraping toboggan, of the panting dog, began to seem to Madge like some sort of desecration of a stillness in which man was nothing and ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... mother; "one! Will land or gold redeem my son? Take heritage, take name, take all, But leave him free from Russian thrall! Take these!" and her white arms and hands She stripped of rings and diamond bands, And tore from braids of long black hair The gems that gleamed like starlight there; Her cross of blazing rubies last Down at the Russian's feet she cast. He ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... my guide, my light, my all; It bade my dark forebodings cease; And through the storm and danger's thrall, It led me to the port of peace. Now safely moored, my perils o'er, I'll sing first in night's diadem, Forever and forever more,— The ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... clang behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again, and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall. ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... tower Of Ilium have had their hour; The dust of many a king is blown On the winds from zone to zone; Many a warrior sleeps unknown. Time and Death hold each in thrall, Yet is Love the lord of all; Still does Helen's beauty stir Because a poet ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... from our burning fatherland carried o'er many a sea, Of Achillaean offspring's pride the yoke-fellow must be, Must bear the childbed of a slave: thereafter he, being led To Leda's child Hermione and that Laconian bed, To Helenus his very thrall me very thrall gave o'er: But there Orestes, set on fire by all the love he bore 330 His ravished wife, and mad with hate, comes on him unaware Before his fathers' altar-stead and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... reizbares Herz wieder gerne dar Deinen zaertlichen Misshandlungen.—O geliebtes Herz! missbrauche Deine Gewalt nicht! Ich bitte Dich, liebe Sophie!"[128] And yet, in spite of it all, he is unable to free himself from the thrall of passion: "Wie wird doch all mein Trotz und Stolz so gar zu nichte, wenn die Furcht in mir erwacht, dass Du mich weniger liebest";[129] and all this from the same pen that once wrote: "das Wort ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... govern the kingdom; and all the nobles and all the churls, both free and thrall, came and did allegiance to him. He set in all the castles strong knights in whom he could trust, and appointed justices and sheriffs and peace-sergeants in all the shires. So he ruled the country with a firm hand, and not a single wight dare disobey his word, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... to Darby, I trust, that if my unworthy example and earnest precept have been successful in rescuing him from the bonds of error and sin—but what is still more dangerous, from the damnable thrall of Popery—it is not for me to vainly extol myself therefor. His conversion, however, will, I trust, be edifying to that interesting, but neglected class, the bailiffs of Ireland. With reference to them, I am engaged during the very few leisure hours that I can steal—so to speak—from my ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... your arms are as good as your legs," said Karlsefin. "Ye are a valuable thrall, Hake, and Leif Ericsson has reason to be grateful to King Olaf of Norway for his gift.—Here, two of you, sling that deer on a pole and bear it to Gudrid. Tell her how deftly it was brought down, and relate what ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... of death; I would rather be a clown and a thrall on earth to another man than rule ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... and saw Kenric, he tarried a while that the cattle might begin to browse upon the lush grass that grew on the marshes beside the sea. Then he went forth to meet him, and threw himself on his knees before him, for Lulach was a thrall, and it was his custom thus to pay homage to the sons of the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... Pharaoh had paced the palace hall Or the long white pillared court that was open to the sky; A passion of wild restlessness ensnared her in its thrall While she fought a fear within her—a thing that would ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard

... inasmuch as it was a particularly cheerful subject, and not in the least likely to over-excite my nerves, I felt I must write it out in spite of the doctor's orders. I therefore proceeded to do this, and hoped it might free me from the thrall of the idea of Lohengrin; but I was mistaken; for no sooner had I got into my bath at noon, than I felt an overpowering desire to write out Lohengrin, and this longing so overcame me that I could not wait the prescribed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... the speaker with half-closed eyes; the others, in thrall of his words, were staring at the table ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... top of the hill, Amilias folded his huge arms, and smiled again; for he felt that this contest was mere play for him, and that Mimer was already as good as beaten, and his thrall. The smith paused a moment to take breath, and as he stood by the side of his foe he looked to those below like a mere black speck close ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... his elder stepping, good Yudhishthir first of all, Each his wondrous skill displaying held the silent crowds in thrall. ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... nothing good to report. Thorbeorn had heard him with impatience, and as soon as he had ended put himself into a rage. His thin neck stiffened, his faded eyes showed fire. "Do you offer for my daughter on behalf of a thrall's son? Well for him he put you forward instead of a smaller man. But I take it ill coming from you whom I have always treated ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... he did not hear, so keen his thrall to the enchantment. No sign of human habitation lay around except the gravelled walks; the castle towers were hid, the boat-strewn sea was on their left no more. Only the clumps of trees were there, the mossy grass, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... the sun at noon; and in winter the frost was bitter to flesh and blood, and the snow fell like flakes or white fire. His only clothing was a coat of sheepskin; about his neck hung a heavy chain of iron, in token that he was a thrall and bondsman of the Lord Christ, and each Friday he wore an iron crown of thorns, in painful memory of Christ's passion and His sorrowful death upon the tree. Once a day he ate a little rye bread, and once he drank a ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... an hour or more while Morrow in the thrall of his exalted mood forgot for the second time in the girl's sweet presence his battle between love and duty: forgot the reason for his coming, the mission he was bound to fulfill—the letter he had promised his ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... Phillips address an audience south of Mason and Dixon's line. Nor was it expedient for John C. Calhoun to address his arguments in Independence Hall, or for Davis and Yulee and Mason to propound theirs in Faneuil Hall. Speech was itself in thrall, and bound to the section in which it found voice. When Garrison and Phillips had been invited to speak in Cincinnati, they were counseled by their friends not to do so. There was danger that the mobs of Covington and Cincinnati would assassinate them publicly; and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... place, Even Circe the Cruel, that came like a Death, Which I fear'd, and yet fled not, for want of my breath. There was thought in her face, and her eyes were not raised From the grass at her foot, but I saw, as I gazed, Her spite—and her countenance changed with her mind As she plann'd how to thrall me with beauty, and bind My soul to her charms,—and her long tresses play'd From shade into shine and from shine into shade, Like a day in mid-autumn,—first fair, O how fair! With long snaky locks of the adder-black hair ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... seest fit So will we do and nought omit." The sage Vasishtha then addressed Sumantra, called at his behest:— "The princes of the earth invite, And famous lords who guard the rite, Priest, Warrior, Merchant, lowly thrall, In countless thousands summon all. Where'er their home be, far or near, Gather the good with honor here. And Janak, whose imperial sway The men of Mithila obey, The firm of vow, the dread of foes, Who all the lore of Scripture knows, Invite ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... man who called to me. He was thin and wiry, with a yellow beard, and his hands were hard with some heavy work. Yet his face was in some way not altogether strange to me, though I could not name him. He was no thrall of ours or of my cousin's, so far ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... who fought so bravely in many of the sharpest struggles of the great conflict, would not have been willing to lay down his arms until his country was freed from the power that had so long held it in thrall. ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

... general opinion, in later days, that demons had power over the souls of the dead, until Christ descended into Hades and delivered them from the thrall of the "Prince of Darkness." The dead were sometimes raised by those who did not possess a familiar spirit. These consulters repaired to the grave at night, and there lying down, repeated certain words in a low, muttering ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... sin-stained threshold; honour's fall Dislodging from her throne love's household pet, And wan-faced purity a tyrant's thrall, With wild ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various

... the song too taught him: hate of all That brings or holds in thrall Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began, The holy body and sacred soul of man. And wheresoever a curse was or a chain, A throne for torment or a crown for bane Rose, moulded out of poor men's molten pain, There, said he, should man's heaviest ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to whom? Count. To me, blood-thirstie Lord: And for that cause I trayn'd thee to my House. Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my Gallery thy Picture hangs: But now the substance shall endure the like, And I will chayne these Legges and Armes of thine, That hast by Tyrannie these many yeeres Wasted our Countrey, slaine our Citizens, And sent our Sonnes and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... nature's quick, and learn to be Sharer in all that thou dost touch or see; Break from thy body's grasp thy spirit's trance; Give thy soul air, thy faculties expanse; Love, joy, even sorrow,—yield thyself to all! They make thy freedom, groveling, not thy thrall. Knock off the shackles which thy spirit bind To dust and sense, and set at large the mind! Then move in sympathy with God's great whole, And be like man at ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... I writ afore, had dust cast in his eyes by the Queen. He met her on her landing, and marched with her, truly believing that the King (as she told him) was in thrall to the old and young Sir Hugh Le Despenser, and that she was come to deliver him. Nought less than his brother's murder tare open his sealed eyes. Then he woke up, and aswhasay looked about him, as ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... sought own, am I forgot?' Ha, thou?—thou liest, I seek thee not. Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, What have I taught thee but her name? Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, I give her thee; Page her triumphal name!—Lady, Take her, the thrall is yours. ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... Blind answered: 'Sire,' said he, 'very unlike are red gold and clay, but more different are king and thrall. Thou didst promise to Olaf Stout thy daughter Ingigerdr, who is of royal birth on both sides, and of Up-Swedish family, the highest in the North, for it derives from the gods themselves. But now King Olaf has gotten to wife Astridr. And though ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... hands, and spurn the piteous blood, To trample on the blessed bread, and spit upon the rood!' The abbot's cheer grew calm and clear: 'Now, Master, tell me true: For aught that Satan proffers thee, such trespass wouldst thou do?' 'From his poor thrall he taketh all, and offers nought instead. The Father's grace,—the Son's mild face,—are all I crave,' he said. 'For any threat of any fate, wouldst follow his commands?' 'The fiery stake I'd rather make my portion at his hands!' The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... of love, Yet from the thrall of love am free; Happy am I that sing of pain And quick forget what pain may be! I sing of death—and lo! To ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused food, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... upright spirit? not, what they implore Reversing, and restraining, lest they do The good they would,—constraining them withal To do the evil they would fain eschew? How wilt thou to the same original Whence all just thoughts and pure desires proceed, Impute corrupt imaginings, whose thrall Enslaves anew the soul but newly freed From their pollution? Can a hybrid growth Arise spontaneous from unmingled seed? Are grapes upon the bramble borne, or doth The fig bear olive berries? Canst thou show Twin waters, sweet and bitter, issuing both From the same fountain? Neither ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... me 'twas a land Of wealth and weal to all; And bless'd alike with bounteous hand The stranger and the thrall. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various

... when my tailor claims his loot Of twenty guineas for a suit Of rude continuations, I must remain his hopeless thrall, Nor would it move his heart at all Could I from JUVENAL recall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various

... absorbed the wrongs of his people and they were many. The Welsh had a double bondage: the grasp of the Landlord and the Thrall of the Church. All about him quivered the aspiration for a free land, a free people and a free religion. In those days Wales was like another Ireland with all the hardship ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... vengeance on me, as I heard from Gwenny. They had not dared to meddle with me while the chief lay dying; nor was it in their policy, for a short time after that, to endanger their succession by an open breach with Lorna, whose tender age and beauty held so many of the youths in thrall. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... fastened round her arm Rings of refulgent ore; low and apart Murmuring, "so beauteous captive, shall thy charms Forever thrall ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... shrunk up with terror into half his size, his little thin, corded neck appearing as if it were striving unsuccessfully to work its way down into his trunk, and his small ferret eyes looking about in every direction for some one to extricate him out of the deadly thrall in which he was held. Mave, who had been aware of the enmity which his companion bore him, as well as of its cause, and fearing that the halter was intended to hang the luckless mealman, probably upon the next tree they came to, did not, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... the victim of enchantment, he became palsied with terror, arid began to plead with the unseen tormentors who he believed held him in thrall. "Only leave me loose, dear good little people," he howled, "and I'll ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... and soul and body render Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall: Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender; Speak to my soul! Take life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the adventurous upon reaching a long-sought land of promise, nor the fresh sensation of the inexperienced when first beholding a new country; it was the relief of enfranchised men, the rapture of devotees of freedom, loosened from a thrall, escaped from surveillance, and breathing, after years of captivity, the air where liberty is law, and self-government the basis of civic life. These were exiles; but the bitterness of that lot was forgotten, at the moment, in the proud consciousness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... said he, "I wot not what thou sayest. I know a thrall, and he is his master's every hour, and never his own; and a villein I know, and whiles he is his own and whiles his lord's; and I know a free man, and he is his own always; but how shall he be his own if he have nought whereby to make his livelihood? Or shall he be a thief and take from others? ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... the darkness. Perhaps he saw in that great black gulf the pictures of these happenings which his companion had prophesied. Perhaps, for a moment, he saw the panorama of a city in flames, the passing of a great country under the thrall of these new ideas. At any rate, he turned abruptly away from the side of the vessel, and taking Peter's arm, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of our soul and brightener of our being She makes the common waters musical— Binds the rude night-winds in a silver thrall, Bids Hybla's thyme and Tempe's violet dwell Round the green marge of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... accuracy of my uncle's judgment. But the fascination of the subject persisted, and for a time Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy," by the comprehensiveness of its induction and its vast array of data, exercised its thrall. Alfred Russel Wallace's "Darwinism," Huxley's "Lectures on Evolution," Tyndall's "The Beginning of Things," Grant Allen's "The Evolutionist at Large," Eimer's "Orthogenesis," Clodd's "Story of Creation," occupied me in ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... dark tide overwhelmed Duane, and when he left the room he was fierce, implacable, steeled to any outcome, quick like a panther, somber as death, in the thrall of his strange passion. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... when his spell in the pit was done, Was cook, nurse, parlourmaid rolled into one; And every wife she vowed that her man Should be trained on the same super-excellent plan. * * * * * Behold these lusty miners all Fettered fast in domestic thrall, Scrubbing, rubbing, baking bread, Busy with scissors and needle and thread, Spreading the brats their bread and jam, Trundling them out in the morning pram, Washing their pinafores clean and white And tucking them up in their cots at night. * * * * * Ask me not—for I cannot tell, I can only guess—how ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... stream, she bent her eyes; Though from her brow the veil descending, bound With foliage of Minerva, suffer'd not That I beheld her clearly; then with act Full royal, still insulting o'er her thrall, Added, as one, who speaking keepeth back The bitterest saying, to conclude the speech: "Observe me well. I am, in sooth, I am Beatrice. What! and hast thou deign'd at last Approach the mountainnewest not, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... on her knees by her friend's side. Their arms were intertwined, their cheeks touching. One of those strange, feminine silences of acute sympathy seemed to hold them for a while under its thrall. Then, almost at the same moment, a queer awakening came for both of them. Helen's arm was stiffened. Philippa turned her head, but her eyes were filled with incredulous fear. A little current of cool ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... household affairs together with the queen, began to cast about for means of escape; for a chance seemed to be offered by the absence of the king. For he saw that even in the lap of riches he would be the wretched thrall of a king, and that he would draw, as it were, his very breath on sufferance and at the gift of another. Moreover, though he held the highest offices with the king, he thought that freedom was better than delights, and burned with a mighty desire to visit his country and learn ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... confiding, Lord, in thee (6) And yet, to shew I I take my calm repose; (6) tell no fibs, For thou each night protectest me Thou hast left me in From all my (7) treacherous foes thrall To Hopkins, eke, and Doctor Gibbs The vilest ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... Thorvald, was away from home with most of the men, I do not know why; but Ragnar, Steinar and I were lingering about the stead with little or nothing to do, since the time of sowing was not yet. At the news of the club-footed man, we ran for our spears, and one of us went to tell the only thrall who could be spared to make ready the horses and come with us. Thora, my mother, would have stopped us—she said she had heard from her father that such bears were very dangerous beasts—but Ragnar only thrust her aside, while I kissed her and ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... shall merit A just regard from me, And all the sex inherit A claim to courtesy; But none has ever claimed me Her vassal, slave or thrall, For Kate, my heart has named thee The sceptred Queen ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... advertisements blazed their unsightly message across the murky sky. Between the two curving rows of yellow lights the river flowed—black, turgid, hopeless. Even here, though they had escaped from its absolute thrall, the far-away roar of the city beat upon their ears. She listened to it for a moment and then pressed her hands to the side ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to another the thrill and thrall of such a sight and sound. It was all unconsciously a bit of prophecy acted out, faint but distinct, of the great day ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... David's heart, with free consent Opens to th' distressed, and the discontent; Who is in debt, that has not wherewithal To quit his scores, may here be free from thrall: That man that fears the bailiff, or the jail, May find one here that will become ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... new thing, I do now perceive, That Christ's Church do suffer tribulation; But that the same cross I might better receive, I request you to show me for my consolation, What is the cause, by your estimation, That God doth suffer his people to be in thrall, Yet help them, so soon as they ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... infatuations for attractive strangers, she accepted Jeff's devotions. The trouble was, though, that life, with Ophelia, seemed to be just one infatuation after another. And now, to cap all, she had suffered herself, nay, offered herself, to fall thrall to the dashing personality and the varied accomplishments of this Fringe person. It was this entanglement which for two weeks past had made Jeff, her official 'tween-times fiance, a prey to carking ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... kings, and princes, too; Pale warriors, death-pale were they all, They cried, 'La Belle Dame, sans merci,' Hath thee in thrall." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... troll driving a pregnant woman before him, and crying to her continually: "A little further yet! a little further yet!" He instantly springs forward with a red-hot iron in his hand, which he holds between the troll and his thrall, so that the former has to abandon her and take to flight. The smith then took the woman under his protection, and the same night she was delivered of twins. Going to the husband to console him for his loss, he is surprised to find a woman exactly resembling his friend's wife in her bed. He saw ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, With few friends to greet me, Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen, With bared ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... many a fray, 895 And serv'd with loss of blood so long, Shou'd offer such inhuman wrong; Wrong of unsoldier-like condition; For which he flung down his commission; And laid about him, till his nose 900 From thrall of ring and cord broke loose. Soon as he felt himself enlarg'd, Through thickest of his foes he charg'd, And made way through th' amazed crew; Some he o'erran, and some o'erthrew, 905 But took none; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... magnetic sleep, That from my being passes upon her, Bindeth the body close in deepest thrall, But setteth free the soul. What real need Hath spirit of these sensuous avenues, Through which the soul looks feebly on the world? This power then opes the prison door awhile, And sends the spirit chainless ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... Had Mary been less ambitious when she first met Bothwell, or had he been a little bolder, they might have reigned together and lived out their lives in the plenitude of that great love which held them both in thrall. But a queen is not as other women; and she found too late that the teaching of her heart was, after all, the truest teaching. She went to her death as Bothwell went to his, alone, in a ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... have loved, and many have rendered vivid pictures of the emotion, touched with insight of genius and universally proclaimed true to nature from general experience; but no two men love alike, and neither you nor another man can better say how a third feels under the yoke, estimate his thrall, or foretell his actions, despite your own experience, than can one sufferer from gout, though it has torn him half a hundred times, gauge the qualities of another's torment under the same disease. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... held in thrall by the widow that on his way home he hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that he had not proposed. If Judge B—— would marry her she surely was good enough for him. Anon, too, he recalled her hesitation about ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... bends forward now, in fierce excitement's thrall, The pitcher writhes in serpent twist, the umpire says, "Play ball!" The batsman swings with sudden spite,—a loud, resounding "spat," And hissing through the ambient air the horse-hide leaves the bat; With one terrific battle-cry, the "rooter" clears his throat, But ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... me, blood-thirsty lord; And for that cause I train'd thee to my house. Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my gallery thy picture hangs: But now the substance shall endure the like, And I will chain these legs and arms of thine, That hast by tyranny these many years Wasted our country, slain our citizens, And sent ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... seemed, the nearer he came to the cottage door. Neither Thornton, nor Holmes, nor Holmes' wife spoke. Mrs. Thornton's arm was flung around the boy's shoulder, and he kept looking up into her tearful face—there was a bond between them that, young as he was, held him in its thrall. Out across the lawn, dotted here and there, in knots and groups and little crowds, men and women stopped where they stood and watched, making no effort to follow—and some, at the renewed evidence of the miraculous, once more so vividly before their eyes, dropped ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... could hint the condition of her mind just then. She was in the thrall of fear, but, had she been questioned, would not have allowed that ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... and harsh enough are their taskmasters; slaves are they to luxury and lechery, intemperance and the wine-cup along with many a fond and ruinous ambition. These passions so cruelly belord it over the poor soul whom they have got under their thrall, that so long as he is in the heyday of health and strong to labour, they compel him to fetch and carry and lay at their feet the fruit of his toils, and to spend it on their own heart's lusts; but as soon as he is seen to ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... that dreams are born to fade away, And melt in air before the light of day; I know that misty vapours of the night Dissolve and fly before the morning bright. The dream is naught—but the dear dreamer—all! She has my soul, Nearchus, fast in thrall; Who holds the marriage torch—august, divine, Bids me to her sweet voice my will resign. She fears my death—tho' baseless this her fright, Pauline is wrung with fear—by day—by night; My road to duty hampered by her fears, How can I go when all undried her tears? Her terror ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... a common ancient practice; the very words "thrall," "thralldom," are etymologically connected with the roots "thrill," "trill," "drill," (Compare Exod. xxi. 6; Deut. xv. 17; Plut. Cic. 26; ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead, looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking, "That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The dead face was ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found, herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or dreaded, she said nothing, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... that ladies bend On whom their favors fall! For them I'll battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall.'" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... had made her thrall, A thrall to him, alas for me; And then, at last, she told me all, And wondered what her ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... ye who far from town in rural hall, Like me, were wont to dwell near pleasant field, Enjoying all the sunny day did yield— With me the change lament, in irksome thrall, By rains incessant held; for now no call From early swain invites my hand to wield The scythe. In parlour dim I sit concealed, And mark the lessening sand from hour-glass fall; Or 'neath my window view the wistful train Of dripping poultry, whom the vine's broad ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... a wild state of confusion, that he could make no reply; and, now that he was no longer held in thrall by Rose's presence, he began to be terrified at what had taken place, for he imagined that he caught a sinister expression in the old man's face which made him very suspicious of the wisdom of the course he had been ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... to "the little sweete nightingale," when suddenly casting down his eyes he saw a lady walking in the garden, and at once his "heart became her thrall." The incident is precisely like Palamon's first sight of Emily in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and almost in the very words of Palamon, the poet ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... hour at the full o' the moon When the Boh-tree blossoms fall, And a devil comes out of the afternoon And has him a night in thrall; And he hunts till dawn like a questing hound For souls that have lost their way; And it's well to be clear of Little Brother Till the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... is no life in the vast centre within the earth, and the immense ether that surrounds it? As the fisherman snares his prey, as the fowler entraps the bird, so, by the art and genius of our human mind, we may thrall and command the subtler beings of realms and elements which our material bodies cannot enter—our gross senses cannot survey. This, then, is my lore. Of other worlds know I nought; but of the things of this world, whether men, or, as your legends term them, ghouls and genii, I have learned ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hold—first and foremost, I must enter a clause, As touching and concerning our excellent laws; Which here I aver, Are better by far Than them all put together abroad and beyond sea; For I ne'er read the like, nor e'er shall, I fancy The laws of our land Don't abet, but withstand, Inquisition and thrall, And whatever may gall, And fire withal; And sword that devours Wherever it scowers: They preserve liberty and property, for which men pull and haul so, And they are made for the support of good government ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... What have I still?—thy spirit, which is THOU. What have I lost?—thy body, which I loved But as the garment which adorned thy soul. Thou art my BERTHO still! I, thy fond OLIVE, Who comes to share thy banishment with thee. Be of good cheer. Only one century Can OENE thrall thee. In the meanwhile, I Shall die, and be a spirit, as thou art. Until that time I will abide with thee; We will on one another patient wait, Till, hand in hand we leave these dismal shores And celebrate our marriage-day ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... Sir Strange knight, And Younker Canute to me call, They shall away to Oringsdorg And the prisoners free from thrall." ...
— The Mermaid's Prophecy - and Other Songs Relating to Queen Dagmar • Anonymous

... needed all The fantasy which held thy mind in thrall To see in that gay Haram's glowing maids A sainted colony for Eden's shades; Or dream that he,—of whose unholy flame Thou wert too soon the victim,—shining came From Paradise to people its pure sphere With souls like thine which he hath ruined ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... guarded in her heart. Jesse one morn was thoughtful, and her sigh The Widow heard as she was passing by; And—"Well!" she said, "is that some distant swain, Or aught with us, that gives your bosom pain? Come, we are fellow-sufferers, slaves in thrall, And tasks and griefs are common to us all; Think not my frankness strange: they love to paint Their state with freedom, who endure restraint; And there is something in that speaking eye And sober mien that prove I may rely: You came a stranger; to my words attend, Accept my offer, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... the mother, "one; Can land or gold redeem my son? If so, I bend my Polish knee, And, Russia, ask a boon of thee. Take palaces, take lands, take all, But leave him free from Russian thrall. Take these," and her white arms and hands She stripped of rings and diamond bands, And tore from braids of long black hair The gems that gleamed like star-light there; Unclasped the brilliant coronal And carcanet of orient pearl; Her ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... Stockbridge, however, who was more to be pitied than Reuben. Peleg Bidwell found himself at the end of the rebellion as at the opening of it, the debtor and thrall of Solomon Gleason, save that his debt was greater, his means of paying it even less, while by his insolent bearing toward Solomon during the rebellion, he had made him not only his creditor but his enemy. The jail yawned before Peleg, and of the jail he, as well as the people generally, had acquired ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... Providence doth sway this all, Why should best minds groan under most distress? Or why should pride humility make thrall, And ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... trod New England's valley, hill, and plain. They met to hold a jubilee, for all Were free from error's chain, and from the oppressor's thrall. Word had gone forth that slavery's ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... thou needs must bear the right Of equal answer. Even in me is might For thus much, seeing I live no thrall of thine, But Lord Apollo's; neither do I sign Where Creon bids me. I am blind, and thou Hast mocked my blindness. Yea, I will speak now. Eyes hast thou, but thy deeds thou canst not see Nor where thou art, nor what things dwell with thee. Whence art thou born? Thou know'st not; and unknown, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... memory begins in the human being." And, like Hugh Miller, he must have been a shy old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by what he could not well account for, peering and poking about among the layers of right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness of that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon{6} his "first-found Ammonite," hidden away down in the depths of his own nature, and which revealed to him the fact that ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... ranges Through realms of blissful thrall, And that is why Exchange is Not getting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... the baron he rose, And called his merry men all: And come thou forth, Sir John the knight, Thy lady is carried to thrall. ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... was Gareth, then replied, 'The thrall in person may be free in soul, And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I, And since thou art my mother, must obey. I therefore yield me freely to thy will; For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself To serve with scullions and with kitchen-knaves; ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... we love it when the mist clouds Hang over it like a pall; No less when the hand of the Frost King Holds it in icy thrall. ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various

... there like a fugitive or a criminal. She had had to crawl away by stealth from that man, her keeper. She, a grown woman and a moral agent, with a will of her own and a heart and a conscience, was held so absolutely in serfdom as a particular man's thrall and chattel, that she could not even go out to visit a friend without these degrading subterfuges of creeping in unperceived by a back entrance, and talking low under her breath, lest a lodging-house crone should find out what she was doing. And all ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... give no answer; but the act is pathetic, and fills the mind with suggestions. She who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature to have the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. Jeanne had entered ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... together. The mist deepened on her lashes as she looked round at the familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept tryst since the day when they had first come there together, he a schoolboy and she but lately out of her teens. For the moment she felt herself in the thrall of a ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall? ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... pleasure to the mourner, 'Tis freedom to the thrall; The pilgrimage of many, And the resting place of all, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... doubt behind, And wondrous things which finite thought In vain essayed to solve, appear To thy untasked inquiries, fraught With explanation strangely clear. Thy reason owns no forced control, As held it here in needful thrall; God's mysteries court thy questioning soul, And thou may'st search and know ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... made us are the life Of living creatures, small and great; We see them not, but space is rife With their bright presence and their state. They are the parents of us all, 'Tis they create, sustain, redeem, Heaven, earth and hell, they hold in thrall, And shall we these ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... every man, and men for every work. These 'rabble,' under proper leaders, were used by the Almighty for a grand purpose— the redemption of this fair land, and his handful of people in it, from the thrall of the priests of Rome. Would such men as the Livingstons, the Carrolls, the Renselaers, or the wealthy citizens of Philadelphia or Washington have come here and fought Indians and Mexicans; and been driven about from pillar to post, living ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... sacredness with which Lanier invested Art held him thrall to the highest ethical ideas. To him the most beautiful thing of all was Right. He loved the words, "the beauty of holiness", and it pleased him to reverse the phrase and call it "the holiness of beauty". ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... through lands which are not mine, Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep: But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall; The infant rapture still survived the boy, And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy, Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. Forgive me, Homer's universal shade! Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy stray'd; ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... brutality than any caress she had ever known, which thrilled her with a glorious joy such as, she realised now, she had dreamt of and lacked, and wanted; which was a harbourage to which she came, blushing, confused—but glad, conquered, and happy in the thrall ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... underlies the whole of this passage is that man is the creature and thrall of fate. In society, in the world, he is exposed to the incidence of passion, which he can neither resist nor yield to without torture. He is overcome by the world, and, as a last resource, he turns to nature and solitude. He lifts up his eyes ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... world was young. Aegisthus hath his queen, and reigns among His people. And the children here alone, Orestes and Electra, buds unblown Of man and womanhood, when forth to Troy He shook his sail and left them—lo, the boy Orestes, ere Aegisthus' hand could fall, Was stolen from Argos—borne by one old thrall, Who served his father's boyhood, over seas Far off, and laid upon King Strophios' knees In Phocis, for the old king's sake. But here The maid Electra waited, year by year, Alone, till the warm days of womanhood Drew nigh and suitors came of ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... Suddenly a thrall of black despair is cast over the happy island. The city of pleasure becomes one great tomb. Of its 30,000 men, women and children, all but a few are slain. The Angel of Death has spread his pall over them, a fiery breath has smitten them, and they have fallen as dry ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... we behold Martinuzzi and the usurping young Queen making matters up at a railway pace. She has it all her own way. If she choose, she may marry Castaldo, retire into private life, be a "farm-house thrall," and keep a "dairy;" for which estate she has previously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... full day, That other time we read it clear, and say, 'Hereon are graven all those early vows We whispered low aneath the summer boughs,' Write every word. That so the stone shall be Ever a witness mute twixt thee and me. Then shall I know thou seekest in me no thrall For after-days, if thou make compact. All Thou hast said, write now." Then on the stone, As she had said, graved Eblis, and thereon Did set his seal. So wedded they: and hand In hand the wide world roamed. ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... maiden still Of Keinton Mandeville Singing, in flights that played As wind-wafts through us all, Till they made our mood a thrall To their aery rise and fall, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... pride did hurry to thy fall, Thou porter of the grim infernal hall - Thou keeper of the courts of souls unshriven! To shun thy shafts, to 'scape thy hellish thrall, Escobar makes a ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... word, he took The hearts of men in thrall: And, with a golden look, Welcomed them, at his call Giving their love, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... change, And then more earnestly did me exhort To Counrries loue, and constancy of minde, Then he was wont: som-whats the cause, 1060 But what I knowe not, O I feare I feare, His to couragious heart that cannot beare The thrall of Rome and triumph of his foe, By his owne hand threats danger to his life, How ere it be at hand I will abide, VVayting the end of ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous

... scenes of the Revolution which ensued. Just as the white banner of peace began to wave over his country, after a struggle of twenty years to which he gave the first impulse, an electric bolt from the clouds mercifully released his wearied spirit from its earthly thrall. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... that we'll tea here, Jim," said Miss Palliser, catching sight of her nephew and the guilty Circe under whose gentle thrall Hamil was ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... of the knowledge of good and evil, and became subject to all diseases, and to death, which is their crown and consummation, and to labour and to progress. For progress, according to this legend, springs from original sin. And thus it was the curiosity of Eve, of woman, of her who is most thrall to the organic necessities of life and of the conservation of life, that occasioned the Fall and with the Fall the Redemption, and it was the Redemption that set our feet on the way to God and made it possible for us to attain to Him and ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... on thee, Odysseus, old age will soon be hastening—old age that is pitiless, and ruinous, and weary, and weak—age that cometh on all men, and that is hateful to the Gods. Therefore, Odysseus, ere yet it be too late, I would bow even thee to my will, and hold thee for my thrall. For I am she who conquers all things living: Gods and beasts and men. And hast thou thought that thou only shalt escape Aphrodite? Thou that hast never loved as I would have men love; thou that hast ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Thrall" :   bond servant, serf, serfdom, thralldom, bonded labor, helot, slavery, bondage, vassalage, subjection, villein, thraldom, subjugation



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